


Oceans of Madness

by ardentaislinn



Category: Persuasion - Jane Austen
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Weather, F/M, Sea Monsters, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 09:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5534192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ardentaislinn/pseuds/ardentaislinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Frederick Wentworth that returns from war is not the same one that Anne remembers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oceans of Madness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leidolette](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leidolette/gifts).



> Leidolette, you had such fantastic prompts I could have written at least five fics across your fandoms, but I am hopeful this will suffice! I am sorry I didn't get it up in time for the main collection, but I hope you can forgive me just the same.

Anne Elliot was a woman with elegance of mind and sweetness of character, but whose prettiness had vanished early in life. She was highly valued by those of any real understanding, and was therefore summarily ignored by her father a majority of the time.

She had two sisters. One, Elizabeth, was vain and contemptuous, and the pride and joy of their father. The other, Mary, prone to convenient bouts of illness, thought herself rather important since her marriage to a Charles Musgrove. Mary was considered happily out of the way by the rest of her family, and was visited only by Anne.

Anne’s truest friend in life was a widow by the name of Lady Russell. She had once been a great friend to the sadly deceased Lady Elliot, a woman much like Anne. Now, Anne and Lady Russell took comfort in each other’s company with great regularity, and Anne held her opinion in the highest of esteem.

If, occasionally, in her lonelier moments, Anne dwelled on an instance when she perhaps wished she had _not_ taken her friend’s advice, well...who was to say?

\---

Wind whipped past the house, rattling the windows and creeping through any gap it could find. Anne shivered, more from the icy fingers of dreaded anticipation than from the cold. Winter was almost upon them, and with it a sense of foreboding.

“Who are these Crofts that have leased our Kellynch Hall?” Mary asked. She was was prostrate on her chaise longue, fanning herself languidly despite the cool chill in the air. “Should we pay them a visit?”

Anne looked up from her book, and carefully set it aside. What Mary really meant, she knew, was ‘are they important?’

“Admiral Croft is a very decorated veteran, Mary. He is well respected, and I believe he and his wife will be the perfect tenants.”

She did not mention that Mrs Croft’s maiden name was Wentworth. Though it was unlikely that Mary would remember the young man that Anne had spent some time with seven years ago, Anne still clutched the secret close to her chest. How could she explain the cacophony of fear and hope that beat within her at the thought that she may see him again?

Her head knew that nothing would be the same - she was too sensible to have any illusions of that nature - but her heart couldn’t help but yearn.

“I suppose we must pay them a visit, then,” said Mary, sounding anything but enthusiastic.

“If you feel too unwell, we could always-”

“Nonsense,” Mary replied, sitting up with more energy than she had displayed all week. “I must do my duty by my neighbours, no matter how ill I may be.”

Anne stifled a sigh. She’d rather hoped Mary would find an excuse not to go, but she should have known better. Mary would not miss any social occasions that came her way, despite her protestations towards illness. But Anne wished she could continue to hover in that unsteady ground between two possible outcomes - hope or agony.

“In fact, I believe that we should go right now. It is still early enough for visiting hours. And this stuffy air cannot be doing my illness any favours.”

Anne acquiesced, as she always did.

\---

During the carriage ride to the larger house, the grey sky had delivered the promise of rain that it had been threatening all day. Though they were mostly protected, even the run from the carriage to the front door was enough to make them uncomfortably damp. Water dripped from Anne’s hair and trickled down her spine, causing a constant, creeping chill to spread through her.

Muted light from outside struggled to penetrate the gloom of the room, and shadows pressed in from the corners.

Anne felt like a displaced stranger in her own home. The drawing room into which the butler had shown them was not Anne’s favourite - the furnishings had been chosen to her father’s taste and not her own. But she had been responsible for the upkeep of the home, so to see items rearranged and reading material different from her own set by a chair, she couldn’t help but feel like she was in a slightly altered version of reality.

Mary was too busy playing the invalid to be curious, so Anne wandered restlessly through the room, noting the changes that had taken place since she’d last seen it. As she neared the door, she heard muffled voices seeping through the crack in the door. Curiosity seized her and her hand had tugged open the door a minute amount before her conscious thought could object.

She heard a woman’s voice first, whom she suspected was Mrs Croft, speaking calmly. Anne pressed her eye to the crack, trying to get a view of the speakers without drawing attention to herself.

Snatches of phrases caught her ear, while the rest of the conversation hung tantalisingly out of range.

Then, clear as a bell, she heard a familiar voice. Roughened by weather and time, it was still unmistakably that of Frederick Wentworth, whom she had so reluctantly jilted seven years before. The effect that his voice had on her had not lessened with time. Indeed, it was as strong as ever.

Lost in a flare of memories, Anne almost missed his words as they rose above the gentle hum of voices. “I should have stayed in Spain. You know I can’t travel in this weather. It’s far too dangerous. I nearly didn’t make it inside before the rain came. What if someone had seen?”

He sounded distressed, burdened, and completely at sea. Anne’s tender heart clenched in sympathy.

“Freddy, you needed to come home. So we can look after you.”

“Lock me away, you mean?” Anne gasped, shocked at the bitterness lacing his words. The door fell open a little more as she stepped back.

The conversation ceased, the sudden silence echoing through the house. Three faces turned in her direction; two unfamiliar, but one that had been etched upon her memory for the last seven years. He’d changed, of course. But the maturity that lined his face shifted him from boyish to breathtakingly handsome.

“Anne?” he whispered, though she heard the word deep in her soul. Colour rose high on her cheeks.

He took two faltering steps towards her, one arm rising as if to take her hand though she was well out of reach. His expression was a storm of emotions; joy, anger, confusion, and hope all swirled across his face.

She slipped through the crack in the door, moving towards him with her hand outstretched to take his. With the suddenness of a summer storm, his expression morphed into to one of abject desolation. He twisted away from her, fleeing for the stairs as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.

Anne stared at the place he had disappeared for a long, agonised moment, turmoil roiling through her. She felt disoriented, as if the ground was unsteady beneath her feet.

She turned slowly. The bewilderment must have been clear on her face as she turned towards the Crofts.

Mrs Croft stepped forward. “I’m sorry. He’s-” She broke off as her husband nudged her, and the two shared a significant look.

“You must be Miss Anne,” the Admiral said with false joviality. He stepped forward and briefly took her hand.

“Certainly, sir.” Ingrained politeness took over when conscious thought was impossible, and she gave a deft curtsey.

\---

The visit didn’t last long. Anne did not have the wherewithal to guide Mary’s conversation topics, as distracted as she was by Wentworth’s reappearance and odd behaviour. So talk floundered, stalled, and then grew awkward as Mary began her standard litany of health complaints.

Rather than endure it, Anne instead said some hurried goodbyes and chivvied Mary out of their old home. The Crofts had naturally protested out of politeness, understanding clear on their faces as they asked them to at least wait out the rain, but Anne was softly insistent in her way and they were soon out the door.

The instant they got in the carriage, damp and miserable, Mary turned on Anne.

“You were very rude in there, you know.”

Anne squeezed her eyes shut at the words. “I know,” she replied. “I’ll apologise tomorrow.”

Mary frowned in confusion. “It was quite unlike you.”

“I’m not feeling quite myself,” she replied, her thoughts drifting immediately to uncharacteristic behaviour of the man she had loved so long ago.

Perhaps she was not the only one that was not themselves.

\---

The next few days passed in relative harmony. Anne did not see the Crofts again, though they were mentioned repeatedly by the Musgroves in tones of hushed excitement. A new family in the area was always cause for a lot of fuss and bother.

The only other excitement was a local villager telling a story of a strange creature in the small lake at the edge of the Kellynch property. Though no one believed him, they humoured him for entertainment’s sake for a few days, resulting in the story spreading far and wide.

Neither topic particularly interested Anne. She did her best to engage in the conversations, but she was too preoccupied with thoughts of Frederick. It was strange enough seeing him again after all these years, without the added confusion of remembering the way his face had changed from joy to misery with such speed at the sight of her.

She wondered if she should try to see him again, whether he _would_ see her. She came up with no true answer.

Until it was decided for her.

\---

It was raining again on the night of the planned dinner party at the Musgroves that Frederick was to attend. Harsh lashes of rain clattered against the house, and the wind howled with a prophetic kind of fury.

Anne had been more nervous than hopeful knowing that Frederick would be at the gathering. She knew that the anxious clawing at her chest was a product of her likely misplaced hope. Anne would never have expected that Frederick would still feel the same way about her all these years later, had Anne not seen his eyes when he first beheld her, before the odd agony had replaced the tenderness.

Still, she was a sensible woman, and knew the ways that the mind could play tricks on oneself. Perhaps she had misinterpreted what she had seen. She couldn’t put too much stock in the feelings of a man that had quite literally run from her.

The tension building within her at the thought of the dinner party - and seeing Frederick again - became more acute as the hours ticked by.

So, it was with a certain kind of relief that Anne heard the news that Mary’s oldest son had fallen from a tree and injured his collarbone. He needed someone to attend him, and with Mary’s reluctance, Anne knew she was the only possible option.

An exquisite feeling of solace was tempered only by the knowledge that she was postponing the inevitable.

\---

She heard the next day that the guest of honour had not even made it to the dinner.

Frederick Wentworth had sent a late apology, disappointing everyone that had been so eager to meet him. Instead, he proposed a walk in the Kellynch grounds the next time there was a fine morning.

After the storm of the night before, the day had dawned clear and bright. The Musgroves, led by Mary, decided that they would use the opportunity to accept Frederick’s invitation. Anne wasn’t given an option to beg off as she wished, which is how she found herself once more on the grounds of her previous home.

They knocked on the front door, and Anne again reflected on how strange it was to be a stranger in one’s own home.

The door was opened almost immediately. Frederick’s expression turned from surprised pleasure at seeing the group, to a frozen mask when he caught sight of Anne. The others, picking up on the tension, shuffled back, clearing a path between them. Anne couldn’t tear her eyes from the man in front of her.

Tension spun between her and Frederick, awkward and fraught. Memories of their time together, and of the terrible way they had parted all those years ago, cluttered her mind. She waited, poised on a precipice, feeling as if however Frederick reacted now would dictate the course of her near future.

After a long moment in which he just stared at her, Frederick gave a swift bow.

“Miss Elliot,” he said, then froze at the lowest point of his bow. He tilted his head up, searching her face. “It _is_ still Miss Elliot, is it not?”

Heat flooded her cheeks, but Anne could not tell whether it was from shame or anger.

“Indeed,” she murmured, and gave an unfailingly correct curtsy. He was impossible to read, and therefore in no way put Anne out of her misery of ignorance.

Frederick must have covered his wherewithal, as he looked about the group.

Anne immediately introduced him to each of the Musgroves, then fell silent.

“Shall we go for a walk?” he asked, breaking the tense silence.

The rest readily agreed, and Anne soon found herself on a familiar garden walk. It didn’t take her more than a second to remember this path’s significance for Frederick and herself. A little way around the corner they would pass a bench bathed in dappled light, on which she had been sitting when Frederick had asked her to be his wife.

Having no way of knowing whether Frederick had picked the path deliberately for any number of purposes, or if he had forgotten such a momentous day as had passed between them, Anne kept quiet. Instead, she eyed his back as he strode on ahead of her and let her confusion fester.

“I didn’t know you knew Captain Wentworth,” a voice stage-whispered to her right. Anne turned in time to see Charles’ sister Louisa Musgrove step up beside her. She hugged Anne’s arm affectionately as they strolled side-by-side.

“We met many years ago,” Anne told her, deliberately lowering her voice.

“And you remember each other still? Must have been quite a meeting!” Louisa teased with her usual exuberance.

“It was a long time ago,” Anne said. Even she could hear the weariness in her voice that the intervening years had bestowed on her.

“So, he’s fair game?” Louisa asked earnestly. “I didn’t imagine he was so handsome.”

Before Anne could fathom how to answer that, Henrietta raised her voice to the group. “How about we go walk by the lake?”

Frederick spun around from his position up ahead with Charles. “Not the lake,” he said firmly.

“Don’t tell me you believe those tales of a monster in the lake, Captain?” Louisa asked coquettishly.

His gaze riveted on hers. “Monster?” The word was completely expressionless.

Louisa swallowed, looking to Anne for support. “A man in the village claimed he saw a monster there the other day. An insane man, of course. He must be. But-” she broke off.

If Anne had not known Frederick so well at one time, she may never have noticed the way he breathed deeply to pull himself together.

“Indeed, he must be insane, the poor man.” He said nothing more, just resumed walking.

Anne fell behind the group, and took the opportunity to turn away from them and visit the bench from her memories. Though she had, of course, sat on it many times since she and Frederick had got engaged and then parted, it was different viewing it now with him so near. The smell of honeysuckle tickled her senses, but it was Autumn now, not Spring when they bloomed, and Anne knew the scent was an echo of a memory from long ago.

A rustle sounded on the other side of the hedge, and Anne turned towards the noise.

“Anne said that you met years ago,” came Louisa’s voice.

Despite the wordlessness of the reply, Anne knew it must be Frederick.

“Is she much changed from when you knew her?” Louisa persisted.

“Very much. I would hardy know her.”

Anne’s heart sank deeply at the words. She’d suspected, but to have it confirmed…

“We all wanted Charles to marry Anne, but she turned him down so he married Mary.” Their voices faded after, that, and Anne sank heavily onto the bench behind her.

Despite efforts to bring herself under control, Anne must have still looked a mess when the group found her not long later.

“Anne, I must say, you look rather unwell,” were Charles’ first words to her.

Though Anne protested, a gardener was flagged down and tasked with bringing a cart.

“You should rest in the main house,” Frederick murmured softly.

At this, Anne was adamant. “I’ll go if you wish,” she said. “But I would prefer to return home.”

It was freeing, in a way, Anne realised, to know his feelings for certain. To be disabused of the notion that there was any cause to hope.

The cart came in due course. Anne must have been in worse shape than she realised, because her legs trembled as she tried to boost herself onto the back. Steady hands immediately helped her, strong and sure. Somehow she wasn’t surprised to find that it was Frederick when she turned around. Their eyes held as his fingers dragged across her waist as he pulled away. She shivered. He glanced away.

The cart rattled away, and Anne was once again swamped in a misty confusion of thoughts.

\---

Frederick became fast friends with the Musgroves from that day, to the point where one of the party suggested a group trip to Lyme, and all the others readily agreed. They decided to stay near friends of Frederick’s, a Captain Harville and his wife. A mutual friend of theirs and Frederick’s was also staying there, a Captain Benwick.

When they arrived in Lyme, the whole party checked into their hotel and went to visit the Harville household for dinner.

When the three of them saw Frederick, it was with genuine pleasure. However, Anne detected a watchfulness in their expressions that she found rather peculiar. Captain Benwick seemed like a gloomy figure at the best of circumstances, but even he had a certain sharpness to his eye when looking at Frederick. The two shared a look that spoke of shared understanding, but Anne didn’t have a moment to worry herself over it.

“And this is Anne Elliot,” Frederick finished the introductions.

The instant that he said her name their faces changed to surprised delight. “Miss Elliot,” Captain Harville began, taking her hand and shaking it with surprising vigour. “I have heard so much about you. What a delightful surprise to finally meet you.”

Anne’s gaze slid to Frederick, but he was staring stoically at his friend.

“Thank you,” Anne replied, not sure what else to say that wouldn’t reveal her confusion. Apparently it was enough, though, as Captain Harville then proceeded to usher everyone through his home.

\---

Dinner that night was a cosy affair. The light was low and the spirits were high. Anne, feeling rather overwhelmed, was glad she was seated next to the more tempered Captain Benwick.

“How long are you home for, Captain?” Anne asked by way of conversation.

“A few months more, I believe,” he replied.

“It must be pleasant to have such a significant break on land.”

He shifted in his chair, and Anne realised that she had made him uncomfortable. “I’m sorry,” she told him.

“It is just that some of the visits I must make while I am here have been, and will be, very difficult for me.”

“I truly am sorry,” Anne murmured.

“I…while I was at sea my fiancé…I loved her very much,” he finished.

Anne’s tender heart burned at the pain lacing his words. “I am so sorry. That must have been terribly difficult.”

“It was,” he murmured. Anne thought that would be the end of it, but after a glance at Frederick, Benwick shifted in his chair so that he was facing her. Anne also glanced over at Frederick to see him watching them with an unreadable expression.

Her attention was drawn back to Benwick as he began to talk. “I was in a hospital when I received news that she was ill. I was still recovering from the things I experienced. I tried, though I was unable to get back to her in time. With Frederick so ill it was a very difficult time.”

Anne gasped. “Frederick was in the hospital with you?”

Benwick frowned. “Yes, of course. He didn’t tell you?”

Anne mutely shook her head.

“He spoke of you so often in that time, I just presumed…” His voice trailed off.

Anne gathered herself, setting aside the information about Frederick for later. Her compassion was what was needed in this moment, not her curiosity.

“How did you cope?” Anne asked.

“Poetry, mostly,” he told her with a wry smile. “Reading of others experiencing the agony of love is a great comfort.”

Anne was about to continue the conversation when Benwick asked a question of his own. “Do you read much poetry, Miss Elliot?”

“I read some, but find I prefer prose.”

The conversation continued on from there, with them debating the merits of both forms of writing. Anne ventured to suggest that reading prose would perhaps lighten his mind, more than wallowing in morose poetry.

Captain Benwick listened attentively, and by the end of the night Anne found herself thinking that they would become friends.

\---

As they walked beside the ocean back to the hotel later that evening, Frederick drew up beside Anne.

“Thank you for talking to Benwick tonight. He needs friends around him.”

Anne made a noise of agreement. “He has been through more than most, by the sounds of things.”

“Yes. But I have hopes that he shall recover in time.”

The two shared a smile, and an easy manner bloomed tentatively between them.

“He mentioned that you were ill and in hospital for some time.”

Frederick’s face instantly shuttered, crushing the new-found camaraderie between them.

“He shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

“For some reason he thought I knew,” Anne told him, trying to smooth the damage.

Frederick was silent for a long time. “I was in a dark place, then, so I was remembering happier moments. It helped.”

Anne swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I am so glad that you still had fond feelings of that time.”

“In contrast to the darkness, those memories took on the cast of a lighthouse in a storm. You cannot know how much it meant to me.”

His eyes were dark and intense in the moonlight. A mix of nerves and heat pooled low in her stomach. Then, his gaze shifted to the ocean behind her, and something primal shifted in the depths. Harsh longing entered his expression, until he squeezed his eyes shut and seemed to forcibly push away whatever he had been thinking or feeling.

With that, he strode off to catch up to the others, leaving Anne trailing behind.

\---

The next day the group decided to take a stroll by the seaside, and Captain Benwick had decided to join their party. A path had been built below street level, closer to the sea, for just such a purpose.

The day was dreary, but not wet. The wind was high, causing the waves to crash into the wall beneath them with awe-inspiring force. Anne pulled her coat tighter around her, squinting against the force of the wind.

“Should we be getting back?” she asked them, her voice nearly snatched away with the gale.

“I say, that’s a very good idea,” Charles said, and was summarily ignored.

Louisa flew up the steps as they strolled past. Anne thought that perhaps she was willing to leave after all, but instead Louisa turned, her arms spread wide to the sky.

“Catch me!” she said, and flung herself in the direction of Frederick. For a heart-stopping moment, she was suspended in the air, before being pulled back to earth. Frederick’s quick reflexes meant he barely caught her, but the relief was still the same.

She disentangled herself from him, and ran up the steps once again.

“Louisa, don’t,” Anne called, but was either unheard or ignored.

Frederick backed away a little, towards the water, trying to get out of Louisa’s reach. Louisa, for her part, must have thought it was part of the game.

Once again she leapt. As she tumbled towards Frederick, a particularly strong gust of wind swept by, picking up a wave and throwing it against the wall below, crashing over the edge. Frederick was hit solidly, water drenching his fine coat.

Their eyes met for a brief instant. Then, Anne watched as his face shifted. Movement crawled beneath his skin, morphing it. _Changing_ it.

Anne had just enough time to process that the Frederick she was looking at was no longer the Frederick that she knew, when Louisa slammed into him.

Distracted by whatever was happening to him, Frederick could not catch her in time. She fell to the ground with a sharp crack as her head hit and fell instantly still.

Anne glanced back to Frederick as the other’s rushed to Louisa’s aid. No part of him was the same. His body had morphed into an inhuman shape, tearing his clothes in a number of places, and his face was unrecognisable as belonging to a human.

With a final look in her direction, he tipped himself into the roiling ocean below. Anne could have sworn she saw the flick of a tentacle where he fell, before there was no sign of him at all.

Hers eyes caught on those of Benwick, and the knowledge in his eyes informed Anne that they both knew Frederick’s secret, and he was aware that she had seen.

Despite the sick feeling churning in her stomach, Anne knelt beside Louisa with the others and began preparing her for transport back to the Harville’s house, which was much closer. She sent Charles for a doctor. Before he left, he touch her arm.

“Did I see Frederick fall in?”

Anne nodded and tried to get words past her throat. “Yes, but he waved to me from below. He’ll make it back to the house in a while.”

Distracted, Charles nodded and left.

\---

No one else seemed to notice Frederick’s absence as they entered the Harville house and settled Louisa in a guest bed.

Still no one seemed to know what to do with themselves, so Anne directed everyone to do simple, useful tasks to help, as she bathed Louisa’s wound and made her as comfortable as possible.

The doctor arrived soon enough to take over, and Anne stood by the window in the next room, looking out over the sea and allowing herself a few moments to speculate about what she had seen.

She knew her eyes had not been playing tricks on her. He had turned into some kind of creature. The question was, why? And, even more importantly, how did she feel about it?

She had no answers.

As she watched, a pale figure emerged from behind the rocks that lined the shore. Anne waited a moment to confirm her suspicious, before leaving the room to grab a towel and set of clothing from Frederick’s room. She left it all outside the backdoor in a neat pile, then ran back to the front room.

His naked form was just slipping around the corner as she looked.

She smiled, then returned to Louisa’s room.

The doctor did not have good news. He could not be certain whether Louisa would ever wake up, and the decision was made to collect her parents and bring them to Lyme in case the worse should happen.

Frederick entered as the debate was raging as to who should go on the errand. Charles wanted to take Mary, who refused to leave; Henrietta was too distraught to be coherent; and while the Harville’s had generously offered to go, it was quickly decided that as strangers, they would not be any comfort to the elder Musgroves.

No one noticed that Frederick had changes clothes before his entrance into the room, but they fell silent at his presence.

“I will go. With Anne.” His tone brooked no argument.

Less than an hour later, they were on their way.

\---

The carriage rocked almost violently at the speed they were travelling. Anne worried about the horses’ footing in the moonlight, but so far they had not met with any accident. Frederick rode alongside, keeping guard.

She still hadn’t had a chance to discuss his transformation. Now that she had had a chance to process it, Anne was no longer so horrified by the thought. She rather thought it explained a lot.

Frederick gave a command and the carriage slowed to a rattling stop. After he tied his horse to the back of the carriage he leapt inside with her before signalling the carriage to move.

They were both silent for a long moment.

“What happened to you?” Anne asked.

He didn’t seem surprised by the question. He’d been waiting to tell her. “We got shipwrecked in a strange and horrifying place. There are no words in our language that I could use to impress upon you the awful, creeping place we were stranded. It…changed us.”

“What are you?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know?”

“There is no precedent that I can find for such a thing as I am now.” His expression was desolate.

“How does it work?”

“When I get wet, I change. I can get a little damp and restrain it with a force of will, but it reaches a tipping point and then I am unable to stop myself from transforming.”

Anne was silent for a moment, digesting this. “Why not move somewhere where there is no water? A desert somewhere far away?”

He gave a jagged sigh. “The sea is a part of me now. It calls to me. I can’t be parted from it for long or it starts eating at me. Gnawing at my thoughts until I am unable to think straight. I need the water as much as I despise it.”

His voice was vibrating with repressed feelings, and Anne watched him in the ark carriage. Half his face was lit by the carriage lantern out the window, and the other half was cast deep in shadow.

“Benwick knows.” It was a statement, not a question.

“He was in the same room as me in the hospital. He saw what I was becoming.”

“And the Harvilles?”

“They know, too.”

Anne nodded. Just as she’d suspected.

“What will you do?” Anne asked quietly.

His eyes were unfathomably deep as he looked at her. “I don’t know,” he murmured. He took a steadying breath and continued. “I suppose I will find some place far away from civilisation. A small cottage near a beach, perhaps. I don’t know if this is will pass on to any child. I can’t ever take a wife, or risk fathering children.”

An aching loneliness permeated his words, but Anne’s misery intensified. She was about to say some comforting words, to convince him that he was mistaken, but the carriage rumbled and slowed to a stop outside the Musgroves’ home.

The next hour was a flurry of tears and organisation. Anne delivered the news in the gentlest way she could, and comforted them with kind words as she helped them to pack their things.

She and Frederick had no chance to continue their conversation before he was riding off into the night, escorting the Musgroves to their ailing daughter.

Anne felt bereft, and she realised that there was every chance she may not see him again.

\---

A few days later and Anne was in Bath with her family. She had been unable to stand the echoing emptiness of Charles and Mary’s home, or the exuberance of the children when they were present. Rather than upset them with her strange demeanour, she chose to join her father and elder sister in Bath.

She was surprised to find the Crofts were in town, and decided to meet with them despite her father’s protests.

The morning was bright and clear, and Anne thought again of Frederick. Would he really isolate himself so thoroughly? She found it hard to believe, but also understood his fears. Could she live like that? Never being able to get caught in rain, or splash in a puddle for fear of being discovered? God only knew what people would do to him if they found out.

Could she live _with_ a man like that? In isolation and fear? Bear his child when it may inherit his affliction? She thought of Frederick, and the warm glow his thoughts caused gave Anne her answer.

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she nearly didn’t see the object of them in the corner of the Croft’s temporary living space.

“Captain Wentworth! You are back from Lyme.” Anne pressed her lips together to stop herself from stating the obvious once again. The Crofts waved her into a chair and she sat, her eyes unable to leave Frederick for more than a moment.

“Yes, I volunteered to bring you the good news. Louisa is on the mend. She has woken up, and is now recovering slowly. I thought you would want to know as soon as possible.”

“Thank you. That is terrific news.”

Their eyes caught and held and their smiles widened.

Mrs Croft cleared her throat. Anne glanced away, breaking the intangible contact between her and Frederick.

“Anne, perhaps you can help us settle a debate,” Mrs Croft began. “I was beginning to feel rather outnumbered.”

Anne smiled. “If I can.”

“Tell me, which do you think is the more fickle of the sexes? I argue that men fall out of love as soon as they are able, whereas _they_ seem to believe that women change their minds almost constantly!”

Admiral Croft took his wife’s hand and kissed it. “Some women,” he told her playfully. “Though, are not many portrayals in literature and on the stage of a woman changing her mind about something or another?”

“And aren’t those books and poems and plays written by men?” Anne returned. “Seems to me to be rather unfair!”

They all laughed, and Anne felt warm and steady for the first time in days. She sobered as she thought of her last conversation with Frederick.

“I do know this: women love the longest, even when all hope seems lost.” Her eyes shifted to Frederick, and she saw him watching her with careful eyes. “We love through any hardship, and any obstacle that is thrown our way.”

There was no reply he could give with the Crofts sitting beside them, but still Anne burned to know what he was thinking. Unable to bear the agony of having laid her heart bare but hearing no answer, Anne soon made her excuses and left.

She hadn’t even made it halfway home when Frederick called her name from down the street. She paused, allowing him to catch up as her heart began to race in anticipation.

He was out of breath, but his eyes held something she had been searching for since he had returned: hope.

“Anne, forgive me. I could not hear you make a speech such as that and not ask you: did you truly mean it? Even knowing what I am? Those words pierced my soul. I am half agony, half hope; fearing that I may have misinterpreted you, but what if I have not? I must know, once and for all – do I still have a chance?”

Anne drew in a shuddering breath, happiness blooming in her chest. “I am yours if you will have me. No man I have ever met compared to you. And that is still the truth, whether you are wholly a man or a little of something else, too.”

“Anne…my sweet Anne.” He took her hand and kissed it. Then, apparently overcome, he tugged on her arm, tumbling her into his arms.

His kiss was chaste, but Anne suspected they were both trembling as their lips met.

The sun shone brightly, washing away the cobwebs of their past, and foretelling of a happy future to come. 


End file.
